We go riding (and drinking) with a group of mtb addicts to find out what two wheels and the Great Outdoors brings to their lives
A summer’s evening, a pub with a beer garden and a bunch of bikes stacked up against the wall. It’s a familiar scene for most riders, the inevitable conclusion to the mid-week razz around the woods with your mates. In amongst the usual post-ride buzz, beers and chatter, a topic gathers momentum. What’s the thing that you love most about mountain biking? For some the answer comes to mind immediately, for others it requires a bit more thought, and a bit more beer.
Considering everyone sitting around the table is in agreement that they love mountain biking, everyone’s ‘thing’, it turns out, is different. Sure, there are elements of mountain biking that are towards the top of everyone’s list of loves, but when it comes to pinning down the one single aspect that gets us going, the answers vary.
Character traits and backgrounds influence what ‘our thing’ is. For the ex-skateboarder with dodgy knees, bikes have replaced boards in delivering a demanding technical challenge, for the nine-to-five office worker, mountain biking gives much needed time outdoors, and the stay-at-home dad appreciates the time spent just chatting nonsense with mates – like we are doing now.
THE TABLE AGREES THAT THEY ALL LOVE MTB, BUT EVERYONE’S ‘THING’, IT TURNS OUT, IS DIFFERENT
Our beer-fuelled chatter is hardly conclusive, but it proves that when it comes to pinning down just what it is we love about mountain biking, there’s a lot to consider. Think about your thing. Are you someone who needs to switch on Strava and go hell-forleather every time your tyres hit the trail? Do you relish time to yourself, the escape from the day-to-day and the headspace that brings? Are you happy to just spend time tinkering in the shed or collecting the bikes you lusted after as a kid? After all, it’s possible to love mountain bikes and not actually ride one. As in our pub-ride gang, there will be riders who know exactly what it is they love most about mountain biking, and others who have never given it a second thought – it’s just a something they do.
Mountain biking’s trump card over other cycling disciplines is its adaptability. Whether you’re a devotee of gnar, love to ride far, or appreciate mountain bikes purely as objet d’art, you can find your space within it.
Naturally the thing you love and why you love it will draw you in one direction or another, bringing you in contact with riders who think in a similar way. Sometimes it puts you in contact with people whose moti
